The social protection programmes of President Muhammadu Buhari will see soft loans granted to about one million artisans and market women, as stated in the proposed 2016 budget.
A senior federal government official disclosed to Premium Times that the tentative budget contains a provision to grant a one-time soft loan of about N60,000 each to one million market women, men and artisans.
The official who spoke under the veil of anonymity, was quoted to have said: “To now have all this hue and cry on alleged versions, and switched copies is not just a distraction, but a storm in a tea-cup.”
The official was further quoted to have revealed that the soft loan, which is one of a six-point social protection programme of the Buhari administration, would cost about N60 Billion.
Meanwhile, Maryam Uwais has been appointed as the Special Adviser for Social Protection Plan in the presidency, and she’s expected to work in the Office of the Vice President.
Apart from the Micro-Credit scheme, there are five other social protection schemes of the federal government.
The schemes are provided for in the budget with about N500 billion, which constitutes nine percent of the total budget for 2016.
The five schemes are:
The Teach Nigeria Scheme: Under this scheme, the federal government will directly hire, train and deploy 500,000 graduates as teachers to public schools across the nation.
The Youth Employment Agency: Here, the government will sponsor between 300,000 to 500,000 non graduate youths on skill acquisition programmes and vocational training for which they would be paid stipends during the training.
Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT): Under this programme, the government would pay N5000 per month to one million extremely vulnerable Nigerians.
The poor Nigerians would only be paid this stipend on the condition that they have children enrolled in school and are immunized.
Homegrown School Feeding: In collaboration with state governments, the federal government would serve one meal a day to students of primary schools.
Free Education Scheme For Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM): Tuition payment would be paid for about 100,000 STEM students in tertiary institutions in the country.
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